The name beneath names

I step through.

The tunnel beyond is dim, lit by veins of faint violet light pulsing through the stone. It curves downward, deeper than any place I've been in the city. Not under Narrowridge. Below it. Beneath its memory.

Every footstep echoes too long.

As I move, the walls shift not physically, but in tone. Texture. Emotion. First cold stone, then the feel of rain, then the scent of burned paper. Echoes. Not of sounds, but of places and people that were.

My Fragment pulses in silence. Not a warning.

Recognition.

I reach a chamber shaped like a descending spiral.

A dome overhead shows no sky only a mirror of the city, inverted and faint, like it floats on water. Narrowridge… but older. Or future shattered. I can't tell.

In the center: a circular pool made of something like glass, but breathing. Not reflecting, but recording.

Hovering above it are six names, each wrapped in glyphs that shimmer when I blink:

Sia Tennin Rhiv Korren Aveth Surien Thayen Murl Rhevan And last: Kade Veylan

My own name hovers smallest. Still forming.

I hear footsteps behind me.

Not loud. Not fast.

Measured.

I turn, and the chamber dims.

A figure steps forward. A man, draped in robes etched with moving ink. A scar curls from his temple to jaw faint, almost ash-colored. One eye glows faint red, like the edge of a dying ember.

He doesn't speak at first. Just studies me.

Then:

"You heard your name spoken before the mirror spoke it back. That… is rare."

His voice is quiet, but strong. Familiar in rhythm, if not tone.

I feel my heart hammer.

"You said… Rhevan. That voice was that you?"

A pause. A flicker of a smile.

"Was. Might still be. Echoes aren't always about past or future. Sometimes they choose sideways."

He steps beside the pool and extends a hand not toward me, but toward the surface.

A ripple moves across the liquid.

A scene appears.

A woman young, with hollow eyes walks through fire that doesn't burn. Her hand stretches forward, and as she touches the air, reality splits like paper.

"That was a memory," he says. "But not hers."

I blink. "Whose, then?"

"Yours. In another fold."

I try to steady my breath.

"What is this place?" I ask.

He doesn't answer directly.

Instead, he points up toward the dome showing the mirrored city.

"This is a chamber of cross names. Places where echoes linger because too many versions of a truth touched the same stone."

He looks at me again. Serious now.

"You're not just seeing them anymore, Kade. You're becoming one."

Before I can speak, something shifts in the air.

A low vibration.

The names above the pool flicker.

His gaze sharpens.

"Someone's calling a name they shouldn't."

He turns, cloak flowing.

"There's another chamber. Not far. We called it the Shadow Room."

My breath catches.

That phrase Ena Varis once whispered it but never explained.

"Go back," he says. "You've seen enough."

But I shake my head.

"I was called here. I step through I see it through."

A long pause.

Then:

"So be it. But know this if you truly enter the Shadow Room, it will remember you."

"Even if no one else can."

As he walks away, he says one final thing without turning back:

"You opened the Ledger. But what you find in there… might not have your name written on it yet."

Then he's gone.

Only the pool remains.

Only the six names.

Only the weight of being the seventh.

And behind me… a new path opening.

Black stone. Cold air. A slow breath from something very old

waiting.